Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an electronic musical instrument system and particularly relates to an electronic musical instrument system capable of reproducing the same function and tone as an electronic musical instrument, which is to be emulated, respectively in two different devices.
Description of Related Art
Conventionally, emulation software for emulating the operation of the existing synthesizers has been known. The emulation software is a software synthesizer that is incorporated into a general-purpose computer, e.g. a personal computer (referred to as “PC” hereinafter) to emulate the operation of a synthesizer, i.e. the target to be emulated, in the PC.
However, the PC is not equipped with the general-purpose operating elements (e.g. sliders and dials) of the existing synthesizers. Therefore, for the PC, it is necessary to use the mouse and keyboard to input the specified information, which is disadvantageous in operability compared with the existing synthesizers that are to be emulated.
Accordingly, a technique called control surface is disclosed in the following Patent Literature 1. The control surface is provided with a controller that has an operation panel having the same arrangement as the operation panel of the synthesizer to be emulated. The controller is connected to the PC with the emulation software incorporated therein and inputs a control signal corresponding to the setting position of each operating element of the controller to the PC. The PC converts the control signal inputted from the controller into a setting parameter and sets the state of a sound source in accordance with the setting parameter. Since the control surface can be operated by using the operation panel that has the same arrangement as the operation panel of the synthesizer to be emulated, the control surface has good operability. However, to use the control surface, the controller and the PC need to be connected. Thus, it is required to carry both the controller and the PC, which is inconvenient.
On the other hand, apart from the control surface, the following system is known. Such a system incorporates the emulation software into another synthesizer (referred to as a “hardware synthesizer” hereinafter) different from the synthesizer to be emulated and enables the hardware synthesizer to emulate the operation of the synthesizer to be emulated in addition to the original operation of the hardware synthesizer.
Since the operation of the synthesizer to be emulated can be emulated using the operating element of the hardware synthesizer, this system is favorable in operability. In addition, this system can emulate the operation of the synthesizer to be emulated with one single hardware synthesizer without connection to the PC and therefore is convenient to carry.